Producer Robert Halmi Sr. is a dreamer and more important, a doer, in times when network television sorely needs both. In the past several seasons, Mr. Halmi has stood virtually alone as a true impresario of the small screen. His 1996 adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels for NBC was considered a giant gamble by both the network and assorted naysayers. But the four-hour production’s critical and commercial success instead spurred equally ambitious Halmi productions, such as The Odyssey, Merlin, Moby Dick and Alice in Wonderland. “I’m filling a void more than anything else,” Mr. Halmi has said. “Nobody else is doing these things—and these things should be done. Television is made for telling big stories, not for doing shallow stuff and satisfying the lowest common denominator.”